How to Organize the People Behind Your Localization Work

Why structure matters more as languages grow

With one extra language, localization is a task someone does. With four, it becomes a system: files move between people, reviewers in different time zones wait on each other, and nobody is sure who decides on a disputed term. The structure you choose determines who makes those decisions and how fast work moves.

There is no structure that suits every organization. The right one depends on how many languages you publish in, how much content changes, whether you have people in each market, and how much local variation you want.

The centralized model

In a centralized model, one team handles localization for every language and content type. Requests come to the team, the team runs translation and review (in-house or through outside linguists), and publishes the results.

Strengths:

• Consistent terminology, voice and quality standards across languages.
• One set of tools and one process, which keeps costs predictable.
• Clear accountability: one team owns the outcome.

Weaknesses:

• Distance from markets. The team may not know local terms, references or what customers actually ask.
• A bottleneck when every request in every language passes through the same few people.
• Local teams may feel the content is imposed and start producing their own unofficial versions.

Centralized structures suit organizations with few or no staff in their target markets, or with content where consistency matters more than local flavor, such as documentation or regulated material.

The decentralized model

In a decentralized model, each market or regional office localizes its own content. The German team decides what to translate into German, hires its own translators and publishes on its own schedule.

Strengths:

• Content is closer to the audience, with local knowledge built in.
• Markets move at their own speed without waiting on a central queue.
• Local teams feel ownership.

Weaknesses:

• Terminology and brand drift between markets, because nobody coordinates.
• Duplicated effort: three markets may translate the same source separately, or pay three vendors.
• Hard to see what exists in each language, or to update every version when the source changes.

Decentralized structures suit organizations with strong, staffed local offices and content that varies heavily by market, such as campaigns built around local events.

The hub-and-spoke model

Hub-and-spoke combines the two. A central hub owns the process, tools, glossary, style guides and vendor relationships. Spokes in each market (local marketers, support agents, sales engineers or contracted reviewers) review translations, adapt content for their audience and flag problems back to the hub.

Central hub

Process, tools, glossary, scheduling, vendor contracts, quality standards, version records

Spoke in each market

Language review, local adaptation, market priorities, feedback on terms and tone

Shared

Decisions on which content each language gets, escalation of disputed terms

Many growing organizations end up here because it keeps consistency without losing local knowledge. Its weak point is the spokes' time: local reviewers usually have other jobs, and review slips unless the time is agreed with their managers.

Core roles every model needs

Whatever the structure, these responsibilities must sit with someone:

• Localization lead: sets priorities, owns the plan and budget, resolves conflicts between markets.
• Project coordinator: schedules work, tracks files and deadlines, keeps the version record.
• Terminology and style owner: maintains the glossary and per-language style guides.
• Linguists: translators or post-editors who produce the translated text, subtitles or scripts.
• Language reviewers: fluent people who check accuracy, terminology and tone in each language.
• Subject-matter checker: someone who confirms product names, numbers and steps are correct.
• Media and publishing: whoever handles video processing, subtitle files, uploads and page updates.
• Engineering contact: for interface strings, website language setup and integrations.

In small teams one person holds several of these. What matters is that each has a name, because an unowned role is where work stalls.

How a two-person team covers the roles

A team of two can run localization for several languages if they split responsibilities deliberately and borrow review capacity.

1. Person A, localization lead and coordinator: owns the plan, budget, schedule and version record, and manages outside reviewers.
2. Person B, content and media: owns the glossary and style guides, runs video processing and subtitle work, and publishes.
3. Borrowed reviewers: one fluent colleague per language (from support, sales or a partner) with a few agreed hours per month.
4. Outside linguists for high-risk content, such as legal or safety material, where a qualified translator is needed.
5. Product or engineering colleagues for a quick factual check of numbers, feature names and steps.

The key is that neither person tries to review languages they do not speak. Their job is to prepare clean material, route it to the right reviewer and record the result. Machine drafts plus human post-editing let two people handle far more than translating everything by hand; the article on machine translation post-editing explains how that division of labor works.

Where reviewers and vendors fit

Reviewers are the part of the structure most often improvised. In-country colleagues know the product and customers but have limited time and may lack translation training. Freelance or agency reviewers have the skills but need briefing on your product and terms. Many teams use both: colleagues for product accuracy and tone, professionals for high-risk or high-visibility content. Finding a reviewer for AI translation covers where to look and how to brief them.

Vendors (translation agencies, dubbing studios, subtitle houses) fit into any model as an extension of the linguist and media roles. In centralized and hub-and-spoke models, the hub usually holds the contracts so terms and glossaries stay shared. Choosing a vendor is a separate decision covered in choosing a video localization vendor.

Trade-offs and common mistakes

• Centralizing without any in-market input, then wondering why translated content performs poorly.
• Decentralizing without a shared glossary, so each market invents its own terms.
• Relying on reviewers whose managers never agreed to the time, so review becomes optional.
• Making one person the only reviewer for a language with no backup, which halts work during holidays.
• Hiring translators before deciding who owns terminology, so each translator makes their own choices.
• Adding languages faster than review capacity grows.

Structure can change. Many organizations start centralized with two people, move to hub-and-spoke as markets gain local staff, and keep central ownership of tools and terms throughout.

Where mydubly fits in a localization team

mydubly sits in the media role: it turns a recorded video or audio file into transcripts, subtitles and, optionally, a dubbed version in one of 21 languages. It runs in the browser with no installation, which suits teams where the person processing video is not a media specialist. The video localization page describes the workflow.

It is a single-user tool rather than a team platform. There are no shared workspaces, review assignments, comment threads or approval steps, and results are deleted within 30 minutes of a job finishing, so files must be saved and shared through your own systems. Each job produces one target language, so a four-language rollout is four runs. Because a dubbed job also gives transcripts in both languages and target-language subtitles that follow the dubbed lines, the person processing the video can send reviewers text to read rather than asking them to watch the whole video first. The guide to translating a video walks through a single job.

Next step: map your roles

Write down the roles listed above and put a name next to each. Where a role has no name, decide whether to assign it, borrow it from another team or bring in a vendor. Then check review capacity per language: if any language depends on one person with no agreed hours, fix that before adding more content or languages. For the step-by-step review process itself, see the review workflow for teams.